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The month of May brings many things, among them Mother’s Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at Cary, if we want to get a leg up on tick-borne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season.

The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is pleased to announce that senior scientist Dr. Stuart E.G. Findlay has received the prestigious National Wetlands Award from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI).

Data Cary's Rick Ostfeld and his team have collected since the 1990s reveals a marked change in the behavior of black-legged ticks -- they are arriving on the scene earlier than ever in the spring. They're also showing up farther to the north, and at higher elevations, than they have in the past.

Ice out at last! The East Branch of the Wappinger Creek, which runs through the Cary Institute's property, remained blanketed under a thick layer of ice and snow most of winter. Not until mid-March did the frozen cover begin to melt away faster than it reformed.

Serving as inadvertent innkeepers for opossums may turn out to be good for your health. Scientists at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, have learned that opossums act like little vacuum cleaners when it comes to ticks, including those that can spread debilitating Lyme disease to humans and other animals.

Author and gardener Margaret Roach gets a lesson in phenology from Victoria Kelly, Environmental Monitoring Program Manager at the Cary Institute. Environmental Monitoring is a longterm program at Cary, begun in the 1980s and designed specifically to monitor climate—and the air, precipitation and water chemistry.

For nearly 20 years, Gary Lovett has kept a journal with notes about a variety of natural events taking place in his backyard in southeastern New York, including the date that spring peepers begin peeping in his vernal pool each year.

Salt, it makes roads safe in the winter, but is it safe for the environment? "In small quantities it would be safe, but not in large quantities," said Vicky Kelly, who manages environmental monitoring for the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

Breeding wolves were killed off in New York back in the 1890s. But hearing nighttime howling today should not be blamed on our imaginations. Another predator, the eastern coyote (Canis latrans), abounds in our area and provides a similar hair-raising effect when we hear it calling.

Dengue fever and chikungunya are transmitted to humans by two species of mosquitos, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. There are no vaccines for these viral diseases and while not often fatal, they can disable victims with painful symptoms for weeks or months.

With cities across the United States facing one of the most brutal winters in recent memory, the use of road salt can be an economic game changer, one that forces snowy cities to be innovators that balance safety, cost and the environment.

In the northeastern United States, warmer spring temperatures are leading to shifts in the emergence of the blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease and other tick-borne pathogens. At the same time, milder weather is allowing ticks to spread into new geographic regions.

Cary's head of education Alan Berkowitz explains why undergraduate research programs are so valuable-both for the students, who gain research experience, and the scientists, whose scientific thinking can benefit from the mentoring experience.

Although western Lake Erie has become an international poster child for noxious algae, a new study suggests that many of the world’s much smaller, cleaner, and calmer bodies of water are likewise in trouble if greater efforts are not undertaken to keep farm fertilizers and other nutrients out of them.

Familiar to the snowy landscape are salt trucks slowly crawling up and down the interstates and city streets sprinkling salt (which is only effective in temperatures above 15 degrees), or salt-brine over the roads.

In the U.S. alone, some 15 million tons of salt is applied to our roadways each year. While its use has real benefits, in terms of safety and navigation, there have been cumulative costs to the environment.